The term ‘Psychology’ was coined in late 17th century from modern Latin psychologia and

generally meant the scientific study of the human mind and behaviour. Mary Ann Mattoon in
Jungian Psychology in Perspective defines the term psychology as follows: “The word
psychology means, literally, the study of the psyche. Psyche has been translated variously as
mind, soul, or spirit. . . . : the academic definition of psychology is ‘the science of behavior’”
(21). According to Jung, this study composed of “all human nonsomatic capacities, both
conscious and unconscious” (Mattoon 21). In other words, psychology comprises all the mental
activity of human beings, whether conscious or unconscious. Literature is also a mental activity
of the author who puts forward his views and visions about the persons, events, or world with the
great power of imagination.

Though the term psychology was coined as a scientific discipline only in 17th century, its
influence was already there in literature. When Aristotle deployed the term catharsis to explain
the effect of tragedy,
he was making use of nothing other than psychology. There he argues that a good tragedy will
produce the effect of catharsis or purgation of the emotions of pity and fear by raising in them
such feelings. In A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, the editor Roger Fowler sums up the
influence of psychology on literature as follows: “The Connection between literature and
psychology is an ancient one. The classic locus is Aristotle’s series of attempts to account for the
effect of tragedy and his deployment of the term CATHARSIS” (192). Again, in A Handbook of
Critical Approach to literature, the editors observe:
In the general sense of the word, there is nothing new about the psychological approach. As early
as the fourth century B.C., Aristotle used it in setting forth his classic definition of tragedy as
combining the emotions of pity and terror to produce catharsis. The ‘complete gentleman’ of the
English renaissance, Sir Philip Sidney, with his statements about the moral effects of poetry, was
psychologising literature, as were such Romantic poets as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelly
with their theories of imagination. In this sense, then, virtually every literary critic has been
concerned at some time with the psychology of writing or responding to literature. (Guerin 153)

In the beginning of twentieth century, especially in 1920s, there emerged a new trend in the field
of psychological criticism, named psychoanalytic criticism. This new fashion received its
impetus from the principles and procedures of the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. This
new tendency offered a theoretical framework to analyze the literature. In the Beginning Theory:
An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, Peter Barry defines psychoanalytic criticism:
“Psychoanalytic criticism is a form of literary criticism which uses some of the techniques of
psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature” (94)

Psychoanalytic criticism, being the application of the psychoanalytic theory, made possible with
Sigmund Freud’s publication of The Interpretation of Dreams and has its basis on three
assumptions. In the first place, it held that the activities of the human mind are largely
unconscious and we have no direct control over it. The repressed feelings are the part of
unconscious. Secondly, it argued that the major constitutive element of human behaviour is sex.
That is, one’s altitude to sex determines the person’s behaviour. Thirdly, the psyche can be
divided into three psychic zones as Id, Ego, and Superego. Id constitutes the libidinal or
instinctual part of human psyche. Superego stands for the moral concepts of life which was
developed against the background of social taboos and religious beliefs. Ego stands for reason
and reality.

Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism is s kind of literary interpretation that makes use of the terms
of psychoanalysis such as the unconscious, anxiety and repression in literary works to show the
traits of literature in its link with psychological situations. It is known that Sigmund Freud started
this modern tradition in his “Interpretation of Dreams” (1900), which provided a method of
interpreting obviously unimportant details of narratives as displacements of repressed wishes or
anxieties. Later, other psychoanalysts like Adler, Jung and Jacques Lacan have inspired a new
school of psychoanalytic critics who illustrate the laws of ‘desire’ through a focus upon the
language of literary texts. The methodology of psychoanalytic literary criticism introduced by
Freud and adopted by most psychoanalysts and non-analysts through the greater part of the 20th
century is founded on the idea that writers create stories and characters that reflect their own
unconscious psychology.

We are living in a world in which psychology plays a vital role in all the daily affairs of human
beings. As a scientific discipline, it has permeated its influence in almost all the realm of human
existence including art and literature. This influence is paramount in the critical study of novels
with the theory of psychoanalysis proposed by the great psychologist Sigmund Freud. The
application of psychoanalysis made the thinkers capable of analysing and describing the manners
and mannerisms of the characters in a literary work and also the mental activity of the authors in
creating a particular character. In order to divulge this multi-dimensional, mysterious sphere of
human life, the writer has to commit himself into the analysis and study of the emotions, feelings
and behavioural patterns of human beings. Sartre suggests, “It is in love, in hate, in anger, in
fear, in joy, in indignation, in admiration, in hope, in despair, that man and the world reveal
themselves in their truth” (97). Here comes the importance of the application of psychology in
the study of literature, for all the above mentioned factors are activities of human mind and
therefore the subject matters of psychology. Miller states: “This should not be surprising in a
writer who came to believe that interior or psychological action had a primacy over exterior
happenings and events, and who organised his own fictions as dramas of consciousness rather
than as a complication of actions” (195).

Psychological analysis of literary texts evolved just as modern psychology began its
development during the early 20th century. This method of critiquing used the concepts
advocated by noted sociologists, including Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Otto Rank and above all
Sigmund Freud. Freud developed the method of psycho analysis as a means of therapy for
neuroses, but very soon expanded it to account for many developments and practices in the
history of civilization, including warfare, mythology, religion, literature and other arts.
Additionally, Holland (1990), who was a leading exponent of the application of psychoanalytic
concepts to the relation between the individual reader and the literary text, described each
individual’s response as the product of a ‘transactive’ engagement between his or her own
unconscious desires and defenses and the fantasies that the writer projects into the literary text.
In this ‘transactive encounter’ the reader transforms the fantasy content he/she has found in the
materials of the story into a ‘unity’ or meaningful totality’ which makes up the reader’s
particular interpretation of the text. In this way Holland accounts for the responses of a reader to
a text by recourse to Freudian concepts. Moreover, the interest of literary critics with
psychoanalytic theory from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan has been greater than the interests
of historians in the same conceptions. However, the field of psycho-history remains relatively
untapped, whereas the psychoanalytic concepts have disseminated into most branches of literary
studies.

The chief function of the psychoanalytic critic is to reveal the true content, and thus to explain
the effect on the reader of a literary work by translating its manifest elements into the dormant,
unconscious determinants that make up their suppressed meanings. Since the onset of
psychoanalysis, the field of study has displayed a powerful set of connections to ‘literature’.
Literary Criticism has played the major role of a mediator between these two disciplines, namely,
Psychology and Literature. Psychoanalysis has attempted to explain literature and while trying to
do so has used literature as a source for psychoanalytic conceptions. Thus, we noticed that
literary criticism has used psychoanalytic theory to interpret literature and literature has also
attempted to exploit and use psychoanalysis for creative purposes. Such psychological criticism
deals with the work of literature primarily as an expression, in fictional form, of the state of mind
and the structure of personality of the individual author.

Literary works attracted Freud while he was studying on The Interpretation of Dreams. Because
the literary texts are highly similar to the dreams which need interpretation just like the literary
texts need interpretation to be understood. The dreams tell what cannot be uttered during the day
by disguising our unconscious feelings with a manifest content which stands for the events
structured in an acceptable plot line while there is also a latent content which stands for the
hidden meanings behind these events in a dream. By the same token, the literary works as well
have both a manifest content.
For Freud, he believed A work of literature was the external expression of the author's
unconscious mind. Accordingly, the literary work must then be treated like a dream, applying
psychoanalytic techniques to the text to uncover the author's hidden motivations, repressed
desires, and wishes.
created with symbols and metaphors, and a latent content needing an inquisition and
interpretation. Freud realized the special case of writers who are, in a way, proof of the fact that
people are dual in nature. “Such writers regularly cloak or mystify ideas in figures that make
sense only when interpreted, much as the unconscious mind of a neurotic disguises secret
thoughts in dream stories or bizarre actions that need to be interpreted by an analyst” (Murfin
505). In that sense, literary texts with their symbols and metaphors can be seen either like the
dreams of their authors or the dream of a person without a name. That is, literary works can be
interpreted as the projection of the unconscious wishes and unresolved conflicts of the author; or
they can be interpreted as the dramatization of the any individual’s possible unresolved conflicts
with the society– so to speak characters’ in the texts or the readers’. For this purpose, different
teachings by different psychoanalysts have been used by critics after Freud such as Ernest Jones,
Otto Rank and Conrad Aiken to understand and interpret the literary texts. The use of
psychoanalysis is not only limited with the interpretation of the texts. Besides, we can also say
that some of the writers and playwrights have utilized psychoanalysis as the symbolism of their
works in forming the structure and creating the plot itself. Such writers offer a psychoanalytic
model of life and struggle of the people throughout their life within a more complex world of
interests.

Psychoanalysis is one of the modern theories that are used in English literature. It is a theory that
is regarded as a theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality that guides
psychoanalysis. It is known that the closet connection between literature and psychoanalysis has
always been deployed by the academic field of literary criticism or literary theory. Among the
critical approaches to literature, the psychoanalysis has been one of the most controversial and
for many readers the least appreciated. In spite of that it has been regarded one of the fascinating
and rewarding approach in the application of interpretative analysis. This psychological
interpretation has become one of the mechanisms to find out the hidden meaning of a literary
text. It also helps to explore the innate conglomerate of the writer’s personality as factors that
contribute to his experience from birth to the period of writing a book. The goal of
psychoanalysis was to show that behaviour which was caused by the interaction between
unconscious and unco-nsciousness. the early 20th century marking the begaining of modern
psychology and with the pace of this psychology the psychological analysis of literary texts
evolved. This method of critiquing used the concepts advocated by noted sociologists, including
Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Otto Rank and above all Sigmund Freud. It was first used or
developed as a method of therapy for neuroses by Freud, but very soon expanded it to account
for many expanded developments and practices in the history of civilizations including warfare,
mythology, religion, literature and other arts. If we look at the history of psychology we will find
that psychoanalysis started from the medical profession. Entering into psychology, it spread into
other fields of study and finally permeated literary studies as one of the different approaches to
literature. The idea of psychoanalysis revolves round the concept that peoples’ actions are
determined by their restored ideas of the recurrent events. According to Monte (1977),
“Psychoanalytic theories assume the existence of unconscious internal states that motivate an
individual’s overt actions”. (Beneath the Mask, 8) .The Psychoanalysis movement is therefore
championed by Sigmund Freud (1859-1939).

Psychoanalysis has been seen as a form of therapy which aims to cure mental disorders ‘by
investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the minds’.
Psychoanalysis examines the articulation of our most private anxieties and meanings to culture
and gives us a perspective on them as cultural formations.

We live in a post-Freudian age; we cannot escape the fact that we think about human life
differently from the way people in the past thought about it. Psychoanalytic approaches to
literature may not always be rich enough, may tend to be reductive, on the level of theory
psychoanalysis is of great importance